The Web page of an informal
network of people who advocate a
UNIFIED national monument or park to transform
the split one at Fort Monroe, Virginia—the site of what the Civil
War historian Edward Ayers once called “the greatest moment in
American history.”*

*Please see the final paragraph in a June 2011
Chronicle of Higher Education
profile. Virginia officials finally
acknowledged this “greatest moment” stature in a 2014 op-ed.

NEW:Daily Press
editorial attacks Gov. McAuliffe’s effort to save Fort
Monroe. The governor seeks to unify the split national
monument. Because Virginia’s past leaders of both parties
ducked, dithered, dodged and dissembled for nearly a decade
until he came along, Fort Monroe went nearly ten years in the
wrong direction. That’s why the editors can now try to argue
that economic necessity means America must sacrifice spirit of
place at the site of “the greatest moment in American history,”
the phrase cited at the top of this Web page. But this is indeed
America, a great nation, and we aren’t going to make that
sacrifice just for the sake of a bogus economic argument plus a
few developers and some Hampton insiders. In due course this
Daily Press editorial will be rebutted. (Watch for word
from Fort Monroe defenders Mark Perreault and Scott Butler,
experts on the financial-necessity bogusness—and, we can hope,
from the editors of the Virginian-Pilot.) Meanwhile,
it’s important to recognize that large numbers of crucial
factual errors permeate and undermine this editorial. Why should
anyone buy the judgment of opinion editors who blunder factually
in so many ways after all these years? See a
half-page-long list of the Daily Press editors’ factual
blunders.

Fort Monroe,
Virginia, looks across the lower Chesapeake Bay, over
Hampton Roads harbor, deep into four centuries of America's
past, and -- if America makes sensible post-Army use of it --
far into the coming centuries. A National Park Service map
uses light green to indicate the two parts of the split
national monument recently established there. But if it’s true
that Fort Monroe saw American history’s greatest moment, that
bifurcation is self-evidently
preposterous. It’s like marring Monticello
with hillside development. Here, red has been added to show
the sense-of-place-defining bayfront space that needs to be
incorporated into the national monument to transform it from
fake to real. [more]

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

If you want the national monument unified in something
like the way that’s suggested by the red area in the
illustration above, you’re a member of the informal
network Save Fort Monroe. You can take action:* Please “like” the
Save Fort Monroe Facebook page
and promote it whenever you can.* Please join
the Save Fort Monroe e-mail list by sending your e-address
to SaveFortMonroe[[[at]]]gmail.com. (Your e-address won’t
be used often, and won’t be used for anything except Fort
Monroe.)* Please take every opportunity to promote
unification of the split national monument via social
media, letters to the editor, online comments, and
personally contacting Virginia journalists as well as
politicians at all levels. They talk to each other!*Please
contact Gov. McAuliffe and encourage him to act on his
stated belief that Fort Monroe should be unified. Be sure
to stipulate: not token unification via a mere “green
connector,” but real
unification—from Buckroe down to the
fortress and from Mill Creek across to the bay. (Ask him
to consult the illustration on this Web page!)

RECENT:On November 17,
the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA)—nearly a
century old, with a million members—spoke up for
unification of the split national monument. The Civil War Trust
followed suit a week later. Both organizations are boosting
strong signals from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe that he plans
to lead the way to unification. NPCA isn’t merely
calling for some spirit-of-place-denying “green connector” or
for a token walking path around the shoreline perimeter.
Instead, NPCA’s
public statement calls forthrightly and unambiguously for
“[p]rotecting the green space that connects the park’s Star Fort
and North Beach area as parkland.” The illustration below uses
the color red to highlight that hundred or so acres.

RECENT:
A Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
op-ed summarizes Fort Monroe’s political outlook as of
summer 2014. (Please see also a July 5 Newport News
Daily Press
letter.)

FROM THE
POLITICAL RIGHT: See a brief
video clip in which former Virginia Delegate Tom Gear -- commended for
seven years of Fort Monroe political leadership by Citizens
for a Fort Monroe National Park -- argues passionately for
making the "phony" national park real by unifying its two
separated parts

Queries, comments, expressions of
willingness to help by speaking out: SaveFortMonroe [[[at]]] gmail.com

Note as of summer 2014: This Web site presents the
overwhelming, nearly unanimous view of almost everybody who
has followed the decade-long process of determining this
national treasure’s post-Army fate: we believe that the split
national monument must be unified. The Web site began as, and
still holds the URL of, CitizensForAFortMonroeNationalPark.org,
but the politics of Fort Monroe advocacy changed everything in
early 2011. [more]